vgriff

So many times during this year I felt like I was in a reading rut, like I just couldn’t get into a good book, but here at the end of the year, I can look back and say that I actually loved many of the books I read — it was actually hard to rank these ten against so many other good ones. There are still three weeks to go before the year is over and I have three more books to finish before I hit my goal, so if you’ve read anything you love, please let me know!

Here are my top ten, starting with my very favorite:

1. The Work of Art by Adam Moss: The most fascinating book! Moss conducts in-depth interviews with a number of multi-disciplinary artists about one specific work to understand where their ideas came from, how they developed the concept, and then how they actually created the work. He includes photos of the works in progress and the artists’ notes/notebooks. Think artists like Sofia Coppola and Tony Kushner; Edward Hopper and Kara Walker. I learned so much!
2. How to Know a Person by David Brooks: I listened to this on a solo road trip through the desert, which was a perfect setting to really absorb what Brooks is trying to share: in order to truly know people, you need to LISTEN first, but then you need to share yourself in a vulnerable way. After reading this I’ve asked many of my friends and acquaintances the questions he suggests and they’ve all resulted in fascinating conversations. My favorite: ask people to fill in the blanks as a way to understand the values that were instilled by their family –> “In my family, we never ______. In my family, we always ______.”
3. The Women by Kristin Hannah: I’ve been a Kristin Hannah fan for a while now and damn, if she doesn’t just keep getting better and better. This was one of those novels that easily sucked me in because of all of the characters’ personal dramas and I didn’t realize just how good it was until I was in the final chapter. It is a testament to the women, especially the nurses, who served in the Vietnam war and haven’t really ever gotten their due respect.
4. Feel Something, Make Something by Caitlin Metz: I love this book so very much. It’s a short, easy to access guide to creating art/craft/something when you are overwhelmed with emotion. A perfect gift either for yourself or for a loved one going through a hard time. I’ve gone back to it for inspiration at least a dozen times already and know it will become a well-worn treasure in the years to come.
5. Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley: I read Crossley’s book in a COVID delirium. I couldn’t sleep on a random Wednesday night and when the Libby app pinged my phone at 3 am, I downloaded the book and started to read it right away. I consumed it over the next sixteen hours, stopping only to nap and feed the dogs. I started out not liking the author because of her attachment to some jewelry that goes missing in the first chapter but she was clever enough to use this as a baseline so you could really feel her true loss as the book went on. Really a beautiful piece. I loved it.
6. Sandwich by Catherine Newman: A few years ago I read and loved a novel called We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman. On a long international flight I finished this new one. If possible, it was even better than the first. In some ways, it’s a perfect beach read – the plot is simply a woman spending a week at the beach with her adult children and her aging parents. But the writing is so spectacular that it raises it to another level. I highlighted so many great lines on my kindle, some of them touching, many of them funny. After an incident with the narrator’s father, her husband tells her:

“He’s just wrong,” Nick says now. “He’s imperfect. This is not new information. It’s okay. You still get to love him.”

Wow. That hit me right in the feels. It’s like a decade of therapy in three sentences. And then in the next chapter, she made me laugh out loud with: But why? Why does a hot flash feel so humiliatingly gynecological? As if your twat is personally shoveling coal into a terrible furnace.

7. The Round House by Louise Erdrich: I had been trying to read this since the NYT included it in its round up of the best books of the 21st Century. I loved The Beet Queen but was always intimidated by how dark and painful all of her other books sounded.  I remember when The Round House came out, and then when it won the National Book Award, but from the description I had zero interest in reading it. Its appearance on the list made me want to give it a go. Erdrich is a wonderful writer but it’s a very painful topic – the mother of the young boy who narrates it is violently raped in the first chapter, and the rest of the book is about discovering what happened. I’d been at it for about three weeks and was only halfway through. I normally give up when I’m not clicking with a book that far along but I stuck with it and am so glad I did. The ending was beautiful and complex and so satisfying.
8. Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll: I am not normally a true crime reader. I get turned off by the focus on violence and dead bodies and I worry that this obsession only serves to make us more afraid of other people. BUT I’m so glad I made an exception for this novelization of the capture of Ted Bundy. It is written from the perspective of the women Bundy targeted, and focuses on their quick thinking and their brave actions that ended up bringing him to justice. A really fast moving and fascinating read.
9. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore: This is a page-turning thriller set in the Adirondack mountains in 1975. The wealthy Van Laar family has their summer home and a long-running summer camp on adjacent properties and you get to watch awkward teen campers alongside the ultrarich banking family as Van Laar’s youngest daughter goes missing. It’s a book where the author clearly loves all of her characters, and she has sympathy for them all, even when they are acting terribly. My favorite is TJ, the second generation leader of the summer camp, as she teaches the campers her impressive wilderness skills. A really perfect summer read, especially if you either loved camp or, like me, always envied those lucky bastards who got to go. (I also loved Moore’s previous book Long Bright River.)
10. The Hunter by Tana French: I love this new Tana French series about Cal Hooper, an American ex-cop who has moved by himself to a tiny house in rural Ireland (this is the second book in the series. The Searcher is the first.). It’s quiet but you are  immediately sucked into this small-town life in the green hills and all of the personal drama that comes with it. A perfect read for a rainy weekend and a pot of tea.